Nova

I am typing through tears this morning.

We woke up at 6:30 hearing odd noises, like a mix of growls and moans. We thought it was Harley at first, but when we got up to look, it was Nova.

She was laying sprawled across the crate, breathing really heavily. We took her out, wrapped her in a towel, and I sat on my bed and held her. Joe and I talked and decided to call the vet to see when we could bring her in. If there was any chance they could fix her, we wanted to take it. It was 7:30 when I called. I'm pretty sure the office doesn't open till 9, but when I told Dr. Kaur what was going on, she said we could bring her in at 8. Joe called in to work to let them know he would be running late, and we sat with her for a few minutes until it was time to go. I scratched her head like she loves for me to do, and talked to her. Every few minutes she would moan and stretch like she needed to throw up but couldn't. At one point, I felt her heart stop and she stopped breathing. Joe rubbed her belly and we heard her slowly start to breathe again.

I knew these were probably the last moments we would have with her. I told her what a great cat she was. How I loved when she climbed on my chest and headbutted me so I would pet her when I was trying to read. Or blog. And how sorry I was that this happened to her. No 3 year old cat should have to suffer this way. I kissed her head and gave her one last head rub. We put her in the carrier, and Joe left to get her to the vet.

Around 8:10, Joe called me. He said that she did not make it to the vet. As he drove, he heard her slowly stop breathing. He got to the vet, and went in and told them what happened. They wanted to know what we wanted to do with the remains.

I am not good at dealing with death. It puts me in a panicked state to think about dying and burying and cremating. But we had to make a decision. I grew up burying my pets in my backyard. Hamsters, mice, rats, fish, birds, frogs... you name it, my parents have it in their backyard. But I do believe that is somewhat illegal in these parts, plus this house isn't ours. The most logical thing was to have her cremated. We decided to pay a little extra for her to have a private cremation and have the ashes returned to us. I know that may sound odd to some of you, but it makes me feel better.

Nova may have been "just a cat", but like I said before, she was a member of my family. She was a cat that was always around, loved attention , and we loved her. She will be greatly missed.

Thank you all for the well-wishes for her over the last week. I really appreciate it.

Our Thursday

We had a typical evening at home today...

Hanging out on the dog.


Building ginormous block towers.


Pedicures.


A refreshing shower.

Splashing in the water.


A book before bed.

It has been a long and stressful day, but we're trying not to worry too much about everything. The vet called me again this afternoon to let me know that Nova was still doing alright. She was getting up and walking around, and wanting to be petted. Her only concern right now is that she isn't able to meow. Nova is a very vocal cat so there is something wrong with her vocal cords. Needless to say, she's still at the vet. Hopefully we can bring her home in the next few days.

The house..... AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Okay... I feel a little better.

You wanna know why we still can't close on it? Because there is a "judgement" on Joe's credit report, two actually, that don't even have anything to do with him. They are his dad's from years ago. Joe is a junior, and of course he and his dad lived at the same address until he was 18. Apparently someone didn't check to make sure they had the right Joe when they were reporting everything. One of the matters was settled, so that one is not an issue. The second however, is not settled. The paperwork at the courthouse that we got, trying to prove that it has nothing to do with us, doesn't have a single piece of information that we can use. No birthday, no social security number, no lawyer info. So they have to proceed assuming that this matter is Joe's. Our mortgage broker is trying to figure out how to get it taken care of. Supposedly we will have it all straightened out in the morning. I won't believe that until I see it.

So... good news... Summer and Camryn's noses have only been running every 10 minutes or so instead of non-stop like before. Hopefully that means the sick bugs are on their way outta here. I, on the other hand, still feel like crap. Must be all this stress.

I'd better try to go to sleep now, so that I have energy to deal with more stressful stuff tomorrow. Goodnight!

Nova Update

FYI: Long post ahead.

So Nova started to do better. She was still drinking water, peeing, and we got her to eat a small amount of canned food through a syringe. We figured that once she ate, she would feel better. Yesterday morning after I woke up I went to check on her. She seemed the same as the night before. I got her out and took her downstairs to her litter box. Nothing. I set her down in front of the food and water. She stood for a moment, and then threw up a whole lot of green stuff. From my many many many experiences of vomiting after lots of morning sickness, I know that you don't throw up green unless there is nothing left in your stomach or something is wrong. I took her upstairs and decided to call a vet that a neighbor had once recommended to us. The vet that had performed her spay was a 20 minute drive away, and at this point I didn't trust them considering her condition.

This new vet wanted me to bring her in right away, of course. At this point, Nova was breathing really hard and wasn't standing up. I got the kids and myself ready as fast as I could, loaded everyone in the car, and drove to the vet. I got her in and after filling out papers we went back to a room and the vet came in. She took one look at her and knew she was in bad shape. We agreed to move forward with anything that would help her, and they took her back to get a chest x-ray and get an IV in her.

I waited with the girls in the little room. We read a few books and I tried to keep them from stealing gauze pads.


After 20 minutes or so, the vet came back in. She said that they managed to get an IV and fluids in her, and take an x-ray, but not before having to do CPR and give her some type of injection to bring her back to life. The x-ray did not show fluid in her lungs, which was good news, but she was hyperventilating, and they still had no idea what was wrong.

The vet told me I could leave if I needed to and call to check in later. I agreed, since I had Summer and Camryn with me, and I needed to go to the store and feed them lunch. We left, and went by Wal-Mart. I had a diaper cake I needed to finish and needed to get a few items. We got those, came home and ate, and the girls took a nap while I put the diaper cake together.

Joe got home around 5, and I was about to start dinner. I called the vet office to check on Nova, and the vet asst. said that Nova was still hanging in there and on fluids, but that the doctor wanted us to come there at 5:30 so that she could talk to us. Joe took a quick shower and I got the girls ready again and we left. The whole drive there, I was assuming the worst. I just knew we were going to get there and she would tell us that it would be best to put her down.

When we got there, they took us back to the little room again. The vet came in, and said that Nova was still in there on fluids, but in a very critical condition. She was still breathing heavily, and her incision from the spaying appeared pretty infected. She explained a bit to Joe about what had gone on that morning, and said that the next step would be to have an ultrasound done to see if they could figure out what was wrong, and then proceed accordingly. She told us the cost involved, and asked us how aggressively we wanted to have her treated. We talked for a minute and decided to move forward. We could not bear the thought of letting her die just because we didn't want to pay a few hundred dollars. This is a part of having pets, and it's important to take responsibility for them. Nova is part of our family.


The ultrasound was to be done the following morning (this morning). She said that a specialist would be performing it so she would call me and let me know what time he'd be there. She took us back to see her before we left. Nova looked so pitiful. She barely moved. The vet rolled her over and showed me her incision. She pressed on it and puss came out. It was pretty disgusting and obviously infected.

We left, expecting to hear from the vet in the morning to let us know when they would be doing the ultrasound. When we got home, we ate dinner and I was helping the girls clean up their play room while Joe did the dishes. Joe got a phone call from the vet office. He was on the phone with them for 5 minutes or so. When he got off, he said that the vet asst. called to tell us that after we left, they took a couple of Nova's stitches out so that they could try to figure out why her incision was infected. The vet looked inside the incision, and saw that all of her organs were out of the protective "pouch" that insides are normally inside. They were calling to ask our permission to go ahead and put her under so they could open her up and try to repair whatever was going on. He said to go ahead.

Around 8:30pm, we got another call. The vet said that the surgery was over, and Nova was stable. They had found that her entire body was covered in infection, from her insides being outside of the protective layer. All of her organs were fine, with exception to her small intestine, which she had to cut a section out of because it was basically dead. They had her on some heavy antibiotics and more fluids, and had gotten some other nutrients in her. She said that Nova was still in a very critical condition and it could go either way. She said that someone would call us in the morning to let us know how she was.

This morning around 9am, my phone rang. Again, I was expecting the worst. I answered, and the vet assistant said, "I'm calling to let you know that Nova is doing really good this morning!" She then went on to say that she seemed to have a lot of energy and they thought she was probably going to eat her breakfast. She told me to call back around 4 to see if we could pick her up, or if they want to keep her for one more day.

So, that is where we are at now. I am amazed that she is still with us. I can guarantee that if I hadn't taken her to the vet when I did, she would have died yesterday. I am SO thankful to this vet. She is the best vet I have ever met, and her staff is wonderful. I think she'll be our vet from now on.

I'll try to post again later. We're waiting on a phone call from our mortgage broker. We were supposed to close on the house today. Not happening, of course. Hopefully today has more good news in store, at least.

Poor Nova

So, as you guys know, we had our cats de-clawed this past Monday, to prevent any future kid injuries. I don't think I mentioned that they also got tested for feline leukemia. They were exposed to it a few years ago and we were worried that they had it. It came back negative for both! Nova also got spayed. We are big advocates of spaying and neutering, but hadn't spayed our own cat, so we decided it was time. We picked them up on Wednesday, and they seemed fine. Nova hobbled around a bit, because of her surgery. We took them both downstairs where their food and water and litter box are, so that Harley wouldn't bother them and so they didn't have to go up and down the stairs on their newly de-clawed feet.

Thursday, I went down to check on them. Jack wanted out of the laundry room so I decided he must feel fine. I left the door open so that he could come upstairs if he wanted to. I didn't see Nova, so I assumed she was sleeping down there and would come out when she felt better.

We didn't see Nova the rest of Thursday or Friday. Yesterday I started to worry about her. I pictured her stitches tearing and her bleeding to death somewhere downstairs. We got flashlights and went downstairs to find her. We looked all over. Under boxes, under the stairs, even up in the joists. She was nowhere to be found. We looked everywhere upstairs, too, to make sure she hadn't come up at some point. I started to worry that she had gotten outside somehow. It's been pretty cold, so that would not have been good. After we had searched all over two or three times, Joe remembered that once, a year or two ago, Nova had crawled up into our box spring in our bed. He went to go look there as a last resort. Sure enough, there she was. He got her out and we could not believe it. She could have only been there since Wednesday, but it looked like she hadn't eaten in two weeks. She was weak, and could barely meow.

We found our smaller dog crate and set it up. We put a towel down, and got her some water and food. She drank a tiny bit of water but wouldn't touch the food.

We got some canned wet food at the grocery store yesterday evening and tried giving her that instead of her dry food. I don't think she has eaten any of it. She drank more water though, so at least she isn't going to get any more dehydrated.

I'm hoping that at some point today she will eat some. If not, I'm going to have to take her to the vet tomorrow. I am just so glad we found her. I don't want to think about what would have happened if we hadn't.